Free Rein

Free Rein is a gathering of seminal essays by Andre Breton, the foremost figure among the French surrealists. Written between 1936 and 1952, they include addresses, manifestoes, prefaces, exhibition pamphlets, and theoretical, polemical, and lyrical essays. Together they display the full span of Breton's preoccupations, his abiding faith in the early principles of surrealism, and the changing orientations, in light of crucial events of those years, of the surrealist movement within which he remained the leading force.

About the author

Michel Parmentier is a professor of French at Bishop's University, Québec. He is the author of Mise au point and Regards contemporains: Textes d'actualité québécoise. He is coauthor with Jacqueline d'Amboise of Second Regards, Récits récents, and Nouvelles nouvelles: Fictions du Québec contemporain. Jacqueline d'Amboise is an independent poet and translator. She is the author of Mother Myths, a book of poems.

Summary

Having broken decisively with Marxism in the mid-1930s, the author addresses the horrors of the Stalinist regime (which denounced him during the Moscow trials of 1936). He argues for the autonomy of art and poetry and condemns the subservience to "revolutionary" aims exemplified by socialist realism.

Product details

• Authors: Jacqueline D' Amboise, Andre Breton, André Breton
• Assisted by: Jacqueline D'Amboise (Translation), Michel Parmentier (Translation)
• Publisher: Nebraska
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.03.1996
• EAN: 9780803212411
• ISBN: 978-0-8032-1241-1
• No. of pages: 293
• Dimensions: 162 mm x 244 mm x 30 mm
• Weight: 689 g
• Series: French Modernist Library; French Modernist Library
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies